The following information is from Children’s Health Defense.

The FDA has approved a lab-grown salmon product from Wildtype Foods, despite conducting no independent safety testing and relying entirely on the company’s own claims. The salmon, grown from fish cells in steel vats, is already being served in restaurants such as Portland’s Kann — even before public oversight guidelines are in place.

FDA documents confirm the agency did not perform its own safety evaluation. Instead, it accepted Wildtype’s “self-determined” conclusion that the product is safe.

The company also bypassed testing for several chemical additives using a regulatory loophole known as “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) — a provision originally meant for substances with a long track record of human consumption.

Jaydee Hanson, policy director at the Center for Food Safety, criticized the move:

“The ‘Generally Recognized as Safe’ designation was never intended for this.
The FDA is negligent, I would say, in allowing a company to use the self-approved generally recognized as safe method.”

Despite public health implications, the FDA did not open the approval process for public comment. The agency’s approval came in the absence of a finalized oversight framework between the FDA and USDA for lab-grown meats.

Wildtype’s funding comes from major corporate and celebrity investors, including Bezos Expeditions (Jeff Bezos), Cargill, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

One of the concerns raised is the use of FGF2, a growth stimulant that has been linked in scientific literature to behaviors found in cancer cells. The FDA also allowed the company to keep secret how the salmon gets its pink color, and whether it uses antibacterial agents.

Wildtype’s lab-grown fish is manufactured using pharmaceutical-style processes. Cells are grown in large steel tanks and fed a “proprietary nutrient blend,” then structured using plant-based scaffolding to resemble real fish. The manufacturing technique is similar to those used to grow cells in drug development labs.

Meanwhile, public pushback is growing. Five states — Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, and Indiana — have already passed laws banning lab-grown meat. Investment in the industry has dropped sharply, falling 75% in 2023 and another 40% in 2024.

Though lab-grown meat companies claim environmental benefits, a study from UC Davis found that the carbon footprint of lab-grown meat could be four to 25 times higher than traditional beef due to the extreme energy required for cell growth.

For more information, read the full article here.